


Neon Rainbow

by LoversAntiquities



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Era, Drabble, Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Gen, Hotels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:22:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13617090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoversAntiquities/pseuds/LoversAntiquities
Summary: Across the country sit thousands upon thousands of roadside motels. These are just some of their inhabitants and the stories they leave behind.(Updates daily, each can be read as standalone)





	1. Albuquerque

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I decided I needed a challenge to keep my skills up, so I'm gonna (hopefully) write daily drabbles for as long as I'm interested in it! I have about four written and I'm gonna hopefully post one a day, so if you have any prompts you'd like to read, send them my way! 
> 
> This may include ships somewhere along the way, but for the most part it's gonna be gen, or established relationship. Tags may change as the pieces go!

It rains the third night of their stay.

Sleepless, Dean sits up in bed and, head propped up with his hand, watches the rain and the drop idly trailing down the window pane, disappearing beyond the condensation and the steady rumble of the air conditioner. Lightning flashes in his peripheral, too far away to be heard, but just bright enough to spiderweb through the sky.

A car passes on the two-lane outside, wheels splashing across wet asphalt, growing louder until it fades out of sight, beyond the stoplights and the blinking Super 8 sign in the parking lot. Across the room, Sam snores, loud and snot-filled, from a cold that hasn’t cleared in a week, no matter how many pills he’s taken. Sinus infection, probably; they can’t afford to visit the clinic though, and there’s only so many home remedies they can try in the interim. Nothing works, but it’ll clear, like everything else.

Another car drives past. The air conditioner rattles. A spider crawls across the window pane, and like every night, after Sam is oblivious to the world, Dean steeples his fingers and prays that they make it to see the morning, that his car will make it a few more miles. That they’ll see home again, and the ones they’ve left behind.


	2. Tupelo

“I need three more quarters,” Sam says over the top of the row of washing machines, forcing Dean’s attention from last month’s Golf Digest.

Not that it probably took much convincing, but Dean fishes through his pockets regardless, coming up with two quarters, a dime and a penny and two sticks of gum. Not enough—nothing seems to be enough these days, no matter how hard they try. “I think I might have a couple more in the coin tray,” Dean wonders aloud.

Sam watches him disappear beyond the laundromat doors, the overhead bell marking his departure. Meanwhile, Sam continues filling the washer with their last hamper and rummages through the trash baskets for unused detergent, coming back with three half-used packets. The dryer, Dean can handle whenever he comes back. That’s his job, after all; Sam handles the worst of the mess and Dean gets to spend his time elbow deep in warm shirts and lint.

If only they were home, Sam thinks, sighing through his nose. A few more days, and they can leave Tupelo, hopefully with all of their limbs and souls intact. Sometimes, it sounds easier than it is.

The bell tinkles again, and Dean rushes through the door, hand raised in triumph. “I got three whole bucks,” he announces, depositing the change atop an unattended washer. “Think that’ll do it?”

Sam chuckles, brushes his hair out of his face. “We don’t have to skimp on the cheap stuff, then.”


	3. Antlers

Dean wins a scratch off.

Not much, but enough to buy dinner for a few nights, and not from two-star diners, either. Right now, though, he needs pain pills and an ice pack. The woman at the register exchanges his ticket for three-hundred dollars, and he cashes in forty on Ibuprofen and a ULINE pack, and leaves the Citgo a few bills richer.

Sam is nowhere to be seen by the time he pulls the Impala into its parking spot, but Castiel is in his bed, still knocked out with a bruise blossoming across half of his face, eye beginning to purple. Dean places his hand over Castiel’s nose, just to make sure he’s still breathing; he is, thankfully, and Castiel stirs with little prompting. “Hey, doc’s got your meds,” Dean says, holding up a clear plastic bottle. “Think you can sit up?”

“I’d prefer to sleep,” Castiel complains, but rights himself anyway. For all of his prowess, Castiel can’t stand pain, especially these days. He takes three pills with little insistence and chases them with Coke, afterwards sprawling back onto the bed.

Dean covers him with a spare blanket and opens the ice pack, cracking it over his knee and rubbing it between his hands. “Swear, you gotta lay off the demons,” he mutters under his breath, but still lays the pack across Castiel’s temple. “Think you can sit still for the night?”

“If you’ll stay with me,” Castiel says. “I can listen to the TV.”

Dean nods—he can do that. The least he can do is keep Castiel company until he heals. “You up for telenovelas?”


	4. Douglas

The Econo Lodge in Douglas has a pool. Not even a green one, but a recently cleaned pool, fresh enough to smell the chlorine from their room. Possibly too much chlorine, but Sam can’t be bothered to care. “Do we still have trunks?” he asks, leaning against the air conditioner to look out the window, past the second-floor walkway. Dean doesn’t answer at first, too busy unpacking or doing… whatever he’s doing by the sink. “Dean.”

“I heard you,” he grunts from the other side of the room. He tosses one of the pairs of swim trunks, and Sam just barely catches it, nearly throwing himself onto the musty floor in the process. “Figured you’d wanna wreck the pool before any kids got their grubby paws on it.”

Storm clouds are beginning to gather by the time Sam makes it out of their room and down the stairs, one of the age-torn motel towels in hand. Not that the weather will make that much of a difference—this far south, summer storms barely even scratch the ever-present humidity—but honestly, Sam has been outside in worse. He’s close to civilization now, though, and in the case of lightning, he can always run back inside.

For a few blessed moments, Sam has the entire pool to himself. Warm, but not unpleasantly so, at least a few degrees cooler than the ambient air. A drizzle falls and mars the rippling surface, and Sam relaxes with his arms resting on the tiled lip of the pool; he floats for a while, and only opens his eyes when someone opens their room door. Dean wanders outside with a towel draped over his shoulders, and the second he sees Sam, he breaks into a sprint down the creaking stairs.

 _Crap, Crap_. Sam evades, somehow, by diving out of the way, just as Dean launches himself into the pool, shouting ‘cannonball’ just before he splashes his way in. Thunder rumbles, and Sam splashes water in Dean’s face—Sam can’t bring himself to care about anything else.


	5. St. Cloud

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song referenced is ["Take Five" by Dave Brubeck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM-tJIYmHLk)

Dean left the radio playing when he left to find dinner, on some station Castiel has no recollection of ever hearing before. Numerous times, Dean and Sam have stayed in this one motel outside of St. Cloud, always in the same room, and each time, Dean plays the radio, leaving it on whatever station the previous occupants were listening to.

Today, it’s jazz, namely a four part band. Idly, Castiel polishes the surface of his blade to near-mirror shine while vaguely listening, foot tapping unbeknownst to him under the table. There aren’t any words in this song, only an alto saxophone and a piano belting out a repetitive rhythm, but a memorable one.

Dean may not admit it, but Castiel knows he likes this, the simplicity of the genre. Sam too, though he’s never expressed any specific preference for any type of music. Though Dean may not have cassettes in his car, somehow, the stations always end up on the wordless tunes, whether in the musty confines of some nondescript motel room or back home, wafting through the library. Their source of music there is an old Victrola with a broken needle, only because the radio waves can’t permeate through the walls at that depth.

But here, there’s always a radio, whether it be in an alarm clock or a separate unit. Ambient noise it may be, Castiel still finds himself humming along while he sharpens the triangular edges of his blade, afterwards polishing the edges until they shine. Rhythmic, methodical, always in time with the beat. Just a little, sitting there on his own, he comes to understand their fascination with music and the stories the lyrics tell. In this case, instrumentals take the place of words, conveying feelings with only sound and staggered notes, minor keys and flats and unpredictable solos.

Maybe, if he digs through the stacks upon stacks of 78s, he can find this album, and others to ease the silence that somehow always surrounds him.

Castiel is just finishing by the time Sam unlocks the door and backs his way inside, hands full of plastic bags and bickering with Dean about… something utterly mundane. Whatever they say, Castiel tunes out and instead listens to the radio and the changing song. “Chow’s up,” Sam announces, placing three takeout boxes in front of Castiel, out of the way of the gun parts and Castiel’s abandoned sword.

“You’re smiling,” Dean says through a mouthful of eggroll, plopping down on his bed. “You good?”

Castiel nods belatedly, looking down to the containers spread out before him. How strange, that something so simple feels so much like home. “I’m good,” he says, and this time, he means it.


	6. Renton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday! So here's a drabble about Dean's birthday!

For a solid few hours past the barely-functioning LED clock’s alarm, Dean sleeps. Through the bustle of cars passing on the interstate, through Sam’s snores, through Castiel’s nightly page turning and pacing.

Not entirely sleeping, perhaps; he knows he’s asleep, yes, but his consciousness is increasingly aware of where he is and what’s happening, and yet, he can’t bring himself to wake up. The sun rises at his back and begins to bathe the room in a yellow glow, and at some point, Sam wakes and stretches, the cracks of his bones audible. Castiel wishes him good morning, asks if he wants coffee from the shop next door, and Sam agrees.

Words begin to blend with the noise of rustling sheets, papers turning, two doors clicking shut. The bathroom fan runs for a few minutes and the shower springs to life, but Dean just covers his head with the blankets and curls closer into himself, sighing through his nose. Something about it is comfortable, despite his aching shoulder and the bruise blossoming under his eye, to lay there and just rest, dozing in and out of awareness. 

The sun rises higher, and Castiel returns by the time Sam is out of the shower and puttering around the room. They chatter idly for a while, about how long it is from Seattle to Lebanon, how long it’ll take for the perpetual fog to clear before they’re on the road. Someone sits near his feet, and Dean suspects it’s Castiel, judging from how he strokes over Dean’s covered foot with his palm. The additional weight of Castiel’s hand relaxes him even further, to where he can barely hear the conversation around him, save for a few spotty words.

Those, Dean clings to.

“He’s turning thirty-nine today,” Sam says.

Castiel follows with, “We should let him sleep, then. There’s no rush.”

“You got him a mini-pie, though,” Sam snorts. “I don’t think he’ll sleep through that.”

Under the cover of blankets, Dean smiles and relaxes his hand underneath his pillow. Any other day, and Dean would be up and downing his second cup of coffee and chasing it with whatever confection he could find. Here, though, he can listen to the rumbling refrigerator and sleep for a few more minutes—no one is going anywhere, after all.


	7. Boonville

Rarely—very rarely—do they ever get to rent out a motel room that has a functioning tub—or functioning bathroom, for that matter. And even rarer do they ever get to rent out a hotel room, capital H hotel, with complimentary soaps and free continental breakfast and routinely laundered linens. Nothing smells like mold, no stains on the floor, and no wear-marks in the mattresses.

Obviously, the first thing Dean does is faceplant into his bed and conk out—Sam, meanwhile, holes up in the bathroom and breaks out the epsom salt and the pack of bath bombs he snuck into the cart during his last Walmart run. They smell like lavender and sandalwood, and by the time the water reaches halfway, the entire bathroom smells like a spring meadow—or, what Sam thinks one smells like. He hasn’t exactly had a history of being able to go out and frolic through the fields.

The water is close to scalding by the time Sam submerges himself, a generous film fogging up the mirror and everything else it touches. His skin stings, a testament to how brutal the winter has been, and the shallow gashes in his thigh make him wince, but it’s worth it. Sitting there, he lets his body relax and breathes in as deeply as his lungs will let him, allowing the tension to unspool and pour free.

In fact, he doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until Dean knocks on the door, discrete as his brother can possibly be. “You better not be dead in there,” Dean says, bleary. “I gotta piss.”

“Gimme five minutes,” Sam huffs. He raises his hand to see how pruned his fingers are, just from laying there for… Who knows how long. The water has gone cold, but despite the unpleasantness, he feels… better. His head is certainly clearer, if nothing else. Though, Dean’s insistence is certainly ruining that calm. “Dude, chill out.”

“You chill out,” Dean shoots back, but ultimately leaves him be.

Intentionally, Sam takes his time letting the water out of the tub and getting dressed, meeting Dean’s disgruntled and sleep-ridden scowl on the other side of the door. “Asshole,” Dean mutters and steps inside, slamming the door behind him. For once, Sam can’t bring himself to care, not when he has a soft bed to fall into and nothing left to do for the day other than sleep and hog the remote, possibly in that order.

“Smells like a perfume department on Valentine’s Day in here,” Dean shouts through the door, and Sam just laughs and throws himself into bed. Whatever Dean’s next complaint is, Sam answers it with a snore.


	8. Mount Ida

Castiel has never been a fan of waiting, for as long as he can remember. Especially when it relates to pain, the only sensation he can currently feel every time he inhales. Not a physical ache, but something resonating down in his very essence, radiating through his all-too-physical body.

No human has ever seen him cry, not until now, curled into the mattress with his hands over his face to muffle his misery. Dean and Sam can’t do anything for him, not until this passes, until one of his legs—why does he have so many legs?—fuses the splintered particles back together, a process that can take hours, maybe days. And all through it, Castiel wishes he could rip into himself, if only to alleviate the pain.

“You sure pills don’t work?” Dean asked earlier, purely out of concern, but Castiel has to bite back a sour remark anyway.

Dean may know pain in all of its various iterations, both from half his life fighting against creatures and the rest spent in Hell, but he doesn’t know the horror of nearly losing an entire limb, only to have to feel it regenerating itself slowly, ever so slowly. Grace can only reform so much at a time, and the process is enough to bring even the strongest of Angels to their knees. Castiel isn't strong enough to survive such a blow, but by some miracle, he did. At least now, all three of them have something they can bond over—coping mechanisms, unhealthy or otherwise.

But much to Castiel’s misfortune, they’re in a dry county, and the only alcohol they has is a near-empty flask that Sam saves to help him sleep after the nightmares stop. Dean’s not any better off, his current stash left at home, almost three hundred miles away. Heat won’t work, nor will cold compresses, not on this type of wound.

All he can do is wait, and cling to both Sam and Dean where they share a mattress. Money is tight, and all they could afford was a king mattress with barely enough cover for the three of them. Still, he clutches Sam’s elbow while Dean keeps close at his back, the warmth of skin soothing him at a physical level, but not where he needs it the most.

They can’t help him, not like he wants them to. But this is a start—this is as close to comfort he can get, at least for now.


	9. Ellsworth

The Gideon in the nightstand is missing the entirety of the Old Testament. Most of the pages, Dean finds, are sitting in the bottom drawer in a pile of ash, only slivers left behind. The rest of the book still clings to the biding, and when he picks it up, half of the remaining pages fall out in his hand, scorched but still legible. Dry, thankfully; Dean has seen worse done to the books in recent years.

Not that he makes a habit of reading them in the first place, but it’s the precedent of the thing. Every motel across the country has a bible somewhere on the property, placed by people spreading the word of God wherever they can. Most of the time, they’re ignored, or passed off as a novelty. Dean collects their memory, though. Just because they’re the same book doesn’t mean they’re the same edition, or copy; some have different covers or printing styles, or even ages.

This one, solid black with a faux-leather binding, has been torched and left for the next poor soul to find it, namely Dean. Carefully, he piles the ashes together and scoops them into his hand, tossing out the remnants into the trash can. It’s the least he can do, aside from setting the book on fire and finishing the job; Castiel wouldn’t appreciate it, and Sam would complain about the smoke.

But they’re not here right now, and Dean is supposed to be cleaning up so they can head home within the hour. Cleaning up doesn’t involve disposing of a desecrated holy book, but distracting himself from the prospect of driving from the outskirts of Bangor back to Kansas is all he can think about. The older he gets, the less willing he is to drive long distances, and especially from the middle of nowhere Maine. How they got here is a miracle in and of itself, a long slog through the snow, and now, trudging back just as slowly.

There’ll be other books to replace it once it’s gone, much like himself, and the new one won’t have scorch marks or smell of cigarette ashes. It won’t be missed, in the long run. Another salesman will come along and replace it in the dead of night, and another person will defile it until it’s unreadable, an endless cycle.

This one, Dean shoves the remnants into the bottom of his duffel out of sentimentality. This one, he’ll keep.


	10. Noonan

The only food they have in the trunk of their car is a plastic bag full of canned dinners and soups, bought two weeks ago in case somewhere along the way, the Impala broke down or their motel in town was the only place of business in the entire city. For once, Sam thanks his own preparedness, and thanks Dean’s pilfered induction cooktop for being not only a source of heat, but their personal savior as well.

The one day Sam didn’t check the weather in passing, and they’re snowed into their room, without power or heat. Granted, they’ve been in worse situations, but considering the snow banks are beginning to butt up against the ground floor windows, this may be climbing the list.

“It doesn’t appear it’ll be stopping any time soon,” Castiel comments from his perch on the edge of Dean’s bare bed, staring out of the window at the sideways-driving snow barreling past. Despite the temperature dropping indoors to near-freezing, he looks utterly unaffected, unlike himself and Dean, the two of them draped in both comforters and an extra set of blankets from the closet.

They don’t even make a dent. The cooktop helps, though, and the canned beef stew Dean has boiling in the pot is another promise of future warmth. “It’ll come back soon,” Sam lies through chattering teeth, clutching his blankets tighter. “I stayed in a hostel off campus one year,” he continues. For the first time since he started dinner, Dean looks up. “First time it snowed in years, and I got stuck with a couple classmates. Only place that was open, so we pretty much crashed for three days.”

“Bet you guys threw some wild parties,” Dean chides. Sam hides a laugh behind his hands. “What else haven’t you told me about college?”

 _A lot_ , Sam thinks, ducking his head. More than he’s willing to tell, but he can start small. Not about some of his near-failing grades or the first few alcohol-induced blackouts, but simple things. Mundane things.

“It’s weird,” Sam starts, curling into himself. “Being in a big city and being able to see every star.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://tragidean.tumblr.com) and [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/loversantiquity).


End file.
